


The Girl Code

by dreamingofdragons



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Cheating, F/M, Humor, Internal Conflict, Romance, Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 08:51:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17383481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamingofdragons/pseuds/dreamingofdragons
Summary: To fall head over heels in love at first sight with Kim Jongdae was a wonderful thing. When he had a girlfriend? Not so much. When that girlfriend was your best friend? Add a whole other level of misery. But what if he fixed you up with his best friend? Well, that might be your salvation or turn the whole situation into one hell of a mess.





	The Girl Code

I could pinpoint the very second that my formerly perfect life started to crash down around my ears. The… very… second. Up until then, everything had been sweet as honey. I’d won a place at the best university in Seoul, studying to be a vet and that very first day I’d made a best friend for life in my roommate Jiho. I made more friends on my course and Jiho made friends and together the whole lot of us mixed up together like we were sisters separated at birth and we’d finally found each other again. And then it happened.

“Yes, we can meet for a coffee. Wait… I said so, didn’t I? I wouldn’t miss it!”  
Strolling through the quad towards the popular campus coffee bar that we all loved to hang out in I felt an irrepressible grin light up my face. Jiho was freaking out! The girl had spent the whole first year dating anything that caught her eye and rebelling from one hell of a strict upbringing. She was a self-confessed – and proud – maneater, leaving a trail of broken hearts behind her. I had long ago stopped even learning their names as I met them once, maybe even twice if they were spectacularly hot and then they were gone, and I had to try hard not to look too pityingly at the next poor devil that had been sucked into Jiho’s seductive web. Jiho had returned to Seoul a week earlier than me, signing up to welcome the new first years for extra credit. By the time I arrived at the new house the six of us best friends were sharing off-campus Jiho had already met Jongdae. For a full week I had heard nothing else and finally, I was getting to meet the paragon of virtue and hotness that hadn’t so much swept Jiho off her feet as swept her up into a full-blown whirlwind.  
“Yes, I’ll be nice to him. Yaaaa, aren’t I always nice?”  
I whined, insulted. “Aren’t I the nicest fucking friend you ever had?”  
“Tone down the attitude that you want to punch me on the nose right now and I might agree with you.”  
Jiho drawled, laughing as she wiggled her fingers in a wave. Putting away my phone I swept towards my best friend in the universe and pulled her into a hug. Eyes sparkling with joy Jiho slipped her arm around my waist. “Now finally my two most favourite people get to meet each other! Jongdae, this is my very best friend!”  
“I’ve heard so much about you that it’s like meeting a rock star.”  
A voice as silken and sweet as melting caramel teased. “Truly, my heart is racing right now.”  
I laughed, taken by surprise and charmed. Still holding onto Jiho I twisted sideways to greet this angel on earth, lips already curved into a welcoming smile. He wouldn’t last, they never did, but until then I could play along with Jiho’s fantasies that this was the love of a lifetime and be nice to the poor bastard.  
“Likewise! I got hardly any sleep… last… night…”  
Time stopped. He sat on the wall beside Jiho, outside the coffee bar with his arms braced behind him and his long legs stretched out. Black skinny jeans made pure poetry of the length and solid muscle of those legs. His sweater was baby blue and made of slightly fluffy wool; it was baggier than his jeans but hung off hard shoulders and a pancake flat stomach. The sleeves fell over his hand – sweater mitts, didn’t the Japanese call it? Absolutely adorable! – and the colour was fresh and pure against his colouring. Black hair with undertones of sapphire in the sunlight tumbled down freshly washed over his forehead and tangled with thick, enviably long eyelashes. His face was arrestingly different; cheekbones so sharp and chiselled he might have been sculpted by Michelangelo and a square jawline with a cleft chin. His mouth was a work of art! But even with all that I might have been safe – Jiho’s claim on him rendering him neutered and blank as a Ken doll – if it hadn’t been for the personality that blazed from those liquid dark eyes. His smile was so shockingly bright that I felt the oddest flutter deep, deep in my chest.  
“I think that Jiho has pushed my virtues a little too forcefully.”  
He grinned at me, his eyes shining like the stars of heaven. “Now you will be disappointed, and I will cry.”  
“I… doubt that.”  
My voice sounded odd even to your own ears; a breathy rasp like he had literally taken my breath away. His grin got impossibly brighter and he shone so brightly that all the figures around him were plunged into grey shadows. He held out his hand.  
“I’m Jongdae.”  
No… no! I absolutely must not touch him, I knew this with certainty! Somehow, I might survive this day but only if I walked away right now and never again laid eyes on Kim Jongdae. But if I stayed then I would be lost and if I touched him then I would be ruined.  
“What’s the matter with you?”  
Jiho hissed in my ear and I realised that I had hesitated way too long. What expression did I have on my face? Horror, as though he was holding out a plague-ridden rat for me to touch? Whatever it was, Jongdae’s sunshine smile was fading, instinctively pulling his hand back like he’d done something wrong. His stunning cheekbones stained with colour. Oh shit. Shit! The thought that I was responsible for the death of that smile caused a sharp pain to knife me in the heart. For that smile, I would sacrifice my future wellbeing. Reaching out, going after his hand, grabbing it from his actual pocket and pulling it free again to twine my fingers through his in a way too familiar movement. Wide-eyed now, half laughing and looking slightly freaked out Jongdae clearly didn’t have a clue of what to make of me.  
“J… Jongdae…”  
Oh great, now I had a stammer. His smile softened. Of course, he did; he thought I was mentally deficient.  
“It’s great to meet you.”  
He said gently. His hand was so warm against mine; his grip firm and his fingertips calloused and for a moment I could feel those hands against more intimate places on my body so clearly that my core clenched. He was too much! Too handsome, too sweet and funny and with his hands on me and his eyes gazing right into mine he was way too damn sexy. For the first time in my life… I fell in love. With my best friend’s boyfriend. My mouth twisted with sheer misery.  
“Likewise.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”  
Jiho spun around the moment we were away from Jongdae. Her dark eyes were flashing with outrage, embarrassment and - worse – disappointment. “How could you? God, and I thought you were my best friend.”  
She knew. The emotions must have been stamped across my face so clearly that she could have read them from space. She knew that I had fallen for Jongdae like a ton of bricks and that I was the worst friend that had ever existed.  
“I’m sorry.”  
I had a horrible feeling that I was about to cry. “Jiho, I’m really sorry. I couldn’t help it…”  
“You don’t like him? How could you not like him! He’s perfect. And how could you be so rude? God, I was so embarrassed I thought I was going to pee myself! Even he knows that you hate him.”  
For a moment I was so stunned that I could only gape at her; mouthing like a goldfish. She thought I hated him? Oh my God, she thought I hated him! A cascade of relief so powerful it was like standing underneath Niagara Falls washed through me and did strange things to my brain. Certainly, Jiho hadn’t been expecting me to break into manic, slightly hysterical laughter. Eyes wide, she took a step back from me.  
“I like him fine, Jiho.”  
I cackled, trying to pull myself together and clutching my aching stomach muscles. “He seems swell.”  
Swell? Swell? Had the emotional trauma transformed me back to 1950s America?  
“You’re acting really weird.”  
I was indeed. Jiho thrust her jaw forward pugnaciously. “And I know you’re lying to me! Don’t I know you inside and out? I know you don’t like him!”  
In a moment golden, shining light seemed to erupt above my head, singing and dancing the hallelujah chorus. Jiho couldn’t have handed me the more perfect solution had she spent a year researching it.  
“OK so… maybe I didn’t really take to him.”  
I admitted: face turned down so that Jiho couldn’t see my glowing, guilty red cheeks. Even suggesting it didn’t sit well in my stomach at all, like blasphemy. She hissed in a breath and then gasped it back out as victory was replaced immediately with horror.  
“You… you don’t… you don’t like him?”  
Guilt, I discovered, felt like I’d just swallowed a bucketful of stinging, slimy eels.  
“Oh hey, Jiho, he’s fine, you know?”  
I backtracked remorsefully. Jiho focused on me with the zeal of an evangelical TV preacher. High Priestess of the cult of Jongdae, I thought sourly.  
“He is fine.”  
Jiho insisted, grasping my hands. “He’s better than fine. You just need to get to know him better. It was stupid to meet outside the coffee shop with all those other people around. We’ll meet somewhere else next time. We’ll maybe invite him here and we can all have coffee.”  
“No!”  
I yelped instinctively. I absolutely could not see Jongdae again. It was already bad enough; I could only imagine that any more time spent in his presence would only make it worse, or even worse clue Jiho in that her friend was not quite as distasteful of her new boyfriend as she was pretending. Jiho’s eyebrows furrowed above her eyes in one decisive, pissed off caterpillar.  
“So, you didn’t take to him straight away. You’re not even going to try?”  
Hurt, anger and disappointment were fighting for dominance. I winced.  
“He’s your boyfriend, Jiho. It really doesn’t matter what I think of him. He won’t be around…”  
Ah. Oops! That really didn’t the mood any more peaceful. Jiho was outright glaring at me now.  
“You’re counting on the fact that we’re going to break up?”  
Her voice was low and furious. “Despite everything I told you about him? How I feel about him?”  
I was counting on exactly that. My best friend’s track record wasn’t known for longevity and it wasn’t that I believed she was incapable of deep emotion, it was just that she was having so much fun being single and pissing her parents off that the guy she settled down for would have to be damn spectacular. And truly, it wasn’t that I was waiting for them to break up! The Girl Code could not be clearer: you did not date your girl’s ex. Even if she dumped him right now or sure as hell if he’d dumped her, it put him forever out of reach. Jongdae was now and for always off limits but, God, I could just about live with that if I didn’t have to see him ever again! Still, I was hardly going to tell her that was I?  
“Jiho, no… But… I mean… Is he so different?”  
I asked hopefully. And to my utter dismay, her eyes softened into limpid puddles.  
“He’s the one.”  
She said simply. Oh. Fuck. My. Life.

So, because I was her BFF and he was the Great Love of Her Life it was a given that Jongdae and I would have to spend time together. Lots and lots of time together. And Jongdae was even more perfect than I’d feared.  
“Oh, oops! Sorry there!”  
It had taken them about a month to start sleeping together. Maybe less and I was thankfully oblivious to it. So, should I say that it took them about a month for him to start coming to our place for sleepovers? It was six am and I was up brutally early to hit the library before my first lecture. This was not entirely necessary but if I had to watch one more meal where Jongdae and Jiho were snuggled up together at the kitchen table while she hand met him little nibbles, I honestly feared I’d vomit on them. Unfortunately, Jongdae was clearly an early riser. Coming out of the bathroom with my towel-dried hair pulled back into a long plait I stopped dead as I almost crashed right into him. Laughing, he steadied me by my upper arms.  
“J… Jongdae!”  
Oh. Oh, Dear Sweet Lord. Jongdae fully dressed was the stuff that dreams were made of. Jongdae wearing only a pair of black boxers was in a different category altogether. The stuff that my filthiest fantasies were made of, to be honest. He wasn’t the tallest guy but every single inch of him had been worked into flawless physical shape. Long, bare legs were lightly dusted with black hair and his calves swelled enticingly. That was nothing on his thighs: they were so irresistibly chunky and hard with muscle that my mouth started watering. Even his goddamn feet were flawless! Highly arched with long toes they were so white and soft that it seemed those babies were permanently wrapped up in socks and shoes like priceless treasures. Yeah, feet are foul and disgusting things: I know this! It just goes to show how totally gone on Jongdae I was that I would still happily press kisses against every inch of them and probably reach orgasm just by doing so. Wrenching my eyes away from his feet and hastily bypassing the biteable thighs – and even more hastily skimming over the boxer-covered territory – I found my eyeballs glued in place. He had six-pack abs. Of course, he did. His narrow waist and hips widened in a perfect V to his hard, broad shoulders and all of it – and I mean all of it – was covered in that perfect skin that seemed to be so soft and silken that it had the lustre of pearls. He. Was. Gorgeous. And he was smiling at me.  
“You’re not a morning person, huh?”  
“Uh… wha…?”  
“You’ve just been staring at me without speaking for about five minutes!”  
He explained, his supernova smile sizzling against my defences and dissolving them to nothing like the boy was superhuman. I shook my head hard like it could clear the haze his presence was plunging me into.  
“Sorry. Sorry! Um… mornings. Yeah. They’re rough.”  
“I’m not all that keen on them myself but I wanted to jump into the shower before you ladies use all the hot water.”  
Dark eyes sparkled with mischief and for a moment I let myself forget that he belonged to Jiho, that he was forever banned to me. I arched my eyebrows at him mockingly.  
“So, you can use all of our hot water, first?”  
“I’m a man. A man has needs!”  
“I have never heard that said in relation to hot water before.”  
His smile tugged infinitesimally wider; some spark of devilment sparkling to life in his liquid eyes.  
“What are we normally referring to?”  
He asked sweetly and I laughed with startled amusement. My hand gently smacked at his bare arm.  
“Bad boy.”  
I chided and something dark and smoky stole through his clear irises.  
“Naw.”  
His velvety voice said with silken quiet. “Naw, I’m good.”  
He was close enough for me to smell: not yet clean but with a punch of pheromones so powerful my core was beginning to throb insistently. I didn’t doubt that he was every bit as good as he said he was. Just… it was my wishful thinking that we were talking about the same thing. And the pheromones, Jesus girl, get a grip! What you’re smelling is a night having gloriously sweaty sex with your best friend. Aching inside, I took a step back from him and then another.  
“Good boy, then. Go shower.”  
I said coolly, turning away from him. Go shower, go get dressed and then go anywhere where I was not!

“I know I’m handsome.”  
Baekhyun was a friend that Jongdae had brought into our social circle. He was handsome. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was so horribly in love with his friend that other men barely even existed to me any more I might well have thought that Baekhyun was handsome enough to give me some very interesting dreams at night. He grinned his trademark cheeky grin. “I aim for people to think I’m so handsome that they question their sexuality.”  
“You’re certainly ugly enough for people to question their sexuality.”  
Jongdae drawled and I snorted my drink out of my nose with laughter. Jongdae shot me a warm look. He still wasn’t quite sure of me; how could he be when I ebbed between glacial cold and scorching heat on a minute by minute basis? Still, Jongdae was nothing if not determined. He was hell-bent on charming me into best friend submission. Baekhyun fixed me with melting, chocolate brown eyes.  
“He’s just being jealous and bitchy. And besides, like I’m going to cry myself to sleep tonight coz you don’t think I’m hot?”  
He scoffed to Jongdae. The other boy lifted his eyebrows coolly.  
“I think you will.”  
He replied, his lips just twitching upwards at the corner. “Buckets of tears. And you can use them to excuse the wet patch from just how much you’ve been thinking about me.”  
Laughing helplessly now I leant back in my chair and let myself pretend for a moment. Jiho was in the bathroom and for a moment I could give in to my aching heart and fool myself that he was here with me tonight. The moment went by too fast. Jiho wrapped an arm around Jongdae’s shoulders and slithered onto his lap, pressing a kiss against his beautiful mouth.  
“Missed me?”  
She murmured. Jongdae’s eyes softened like deep pools of molten, rich chocolate.  
“You were gone way too long.”  
He breathed against her lips. His hands slid up into her hair, cradling her face like she was more fragile than the most delicate glass. Inside my chest, my heart shattered; jagged pieces slicing into my lungs and making it so hard to breathe. I could taste the blood: copper coins on my tongue. I couldn’t do this. It was breaking something inside me to pretend. Rising to my feet so abruptly that the chair made a horrible screeching sound as it pulled back, I was perversely glad that Jiho and Jongdae both flinched.  
“I have to go.”  
“Go?”  
Jiho looked astonished. “We’ve only had one drink! You said you were out for the night!”  
“I can’t stand the guilt.”  
I lied glibly. “If I leave now, I can hit the books for an hour or two before I go to sleep.”  
“Oh, come on!”  
Jiho exploded, her dark eyes beginning to flash with temper. “It’s Saturday night and it’s the beginning of the damn year! You absolutely do not need to be cramming tonight and you know it!”  
She was mad at me. She had been getting madder and madder that far from falling for Jongdae’s charms the more time she forced me to spend with the two of them I was getting colder and ruder. I had to! God, the more time I spent with him he was sinking deeper and deeper into my heart and fantasies. I had even started dreaming of him at nights: sexy, explicit dreams where the sheer force of my longing had forced some sort of relief in my subconscious. Waking up from those dreams where he was mine, seeing them together felt like they were pouring acid into my eyes.  
“And if you think that, then you have fun tonight.”  
I retorted, more sharply than I’d intended. Jiho flinched back, her eyes widening. I might have softened, would have apologised if Jongdae’s hands hadn’t curled protectively around her to press intimately against her stomach. Protecting her from me. Nausea hit so suddenly that I honestly thought I was going to puke. Without another word I spun around and left the bar.

There was a long silence after she’s gone, which Baekhyun finally broke. He whistled.  
“Yeah. No doubt about it, Dae, she hates your guts.”  
Jongdae had watched her leave; his mouth set into a hard line but at Baekhyun’s words he shot his friend a dark glare. Jiho waved her hands fretfully in the air as though she could dispel the words.  
“No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t!”  
And at the two guys’ incredulous expressions she flushed. “I think I know what it is. She works so hard that she doesn’t get a chance to date, you know? And it was usually her and me. But now she’s watching me with you, right? And it reminds her of what she doesn’t have!”  
Baekhyun opened his mouth and then shut it again.  
“That… isn’t unreasonable.”  
He said slowly, and then his eyes widened.  
“But I was here! She should have been so distracted by me that she wouldn’t even notice what you two lovebirds were doing.”  
“You have a girlfriend, Baek.”  
Jiho replied, with the light of the vindicated in her eyes. “You are totally girlfriended up!”  
Baekhyun grinned.  
“I am indeed.”  
He agreed. “OK, points to you. Easy to resolve, either way. Either you stop hanging out with her when you’re together or Dae fixes her up with one of the guys.”  
“I do what?”  
Jongdae yelped even as Jiho gave a gasp of delighted approval.  
“That’s perfect!”  
Twisting in his arms she framed his face in her hands and beamed at him. “Jongdae, that would be so perfect! Best friends dating best friends? And she has someone of her own that can finally prise her out of the library and force her to remember that she’s only nineteen. Baek, you’re a genius!”  
“I really don’t think…”  
Whatever Jongdae thought was drowned out by the two more enthusiastic members of the group. Baekhyun was already flipping through his mental list of friends.”  
“Take your pick, really.”  
He told Jiho with a shrug. “Chanyeol is dating Mari right now but other than that everyone else is pretty much single. Sehun?”  
“He’s kind of a brat. Although very hot!”  
Jiho said doubtfully.  
“Junmyeon?”  
“Maybe too grown up. They’d be spending their nights inside, drinking cups of cocoa in their slippers and going to bed at nine pm before you know it.”  
“Jongin, then. He knows how to party!”  
“He does indeed.”  
Jongdae drawled. “Next.”  
“Kyungsoo?”  
“We want to get her out of the library, not for them both to move in there permanently.”  
“Well, that leaves Yixing and Minseok.”  
Jiho’s eyes started to sparkle.  
“I thought that Minseok was dating Soohyun?”  
“He was but they split up over the summer. It wasn’t working out. They’re still friends though.”  
“Oh my God, either of those guys would be absolutely perfect! Dae, can you sound them out? No point making plans if they’re not interested.”  
“They will be.”  
Baekhyun’s eyes sparkled with suppressed laughter. “She might make dramatic exits but she’s smoking hot.”  
“She’s very smart and a wonderful friend!”  
Jiho told her, insulted on her friend’s behalf. Baekhyun hid his laugh behind his hand.  
“Both qualities that I absolutely place before smoking hotness.”  
He agreed gravely. Jongdae had been noticeably quiet during this discussion and they both turned to him expectantly.  
“Dae…?”  
“Dae…?”  
“I’ll ask them.”  
Jongdae replied slowly. “But as you said, she has plenty going for her. Likely she doesn’t need to be fixed up with one of my friends just because it would make it easier for us.”  
“That isn’t why we’re doing this!”  
Jiho retorted defensively. “And yes, she could have anyone she wanted but she studies so hard. We’re just offering her a little help, you know? Doing the research for her. Cutting out the no-hopers and the non-interested’s”  
This, Jongdae admitted, was not unreasonable.  
“So, I’ll ask them tomorrow.”  
“Tonight.”  
Jiho suggested sweetly. “You live together. It won’t be hard.”  
“Tonight.”  
Jongdae agreed with a groan.

**Author's Note:**

> OK, guys, I'm asking for your input on this one! I honestly cannot choose whether Jongdae should fix her up with Yixing or Minseok. Do you have any preferences? Let me know in the comments and we'll move from there!


End file.
